


Haurasha'man

by theRadioStarr



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Elves, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5348996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theRadioStarr/pseuds/theRadioStarr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clan Lavellan celebrates Haurasha’man, a weeklong event at the beginning of Bloomingtide dedicated to June, Sylaise, and Ghilan’nain. It’s not Lupa’s favourite holiday - the halla aren’t exactly her biggest fans. </p>
<p>The 'Fantastic Four' take the time to enjoy each others’ company as much as they possibly can, and Ariya finds comfort in a familiar place.</p>
<p>Ariya and Gaelin Lavellan belong to http://head-bitch-inquisitor.tumblr.com (HeadLadyInquisitor).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haurasha'man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeadLadyInquisitor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeadLadyInquisitor/gifts).



> An OC collaboration with @head-bitch-inquisitor on Tumblr, using information from @pridetothefall's Dalish Holiday headcanons post. 
> 
> Original post can be seen here: http://pridetothefall.tumblr.com/post/127612239504/the-dalish-holiday-guide

Ariya shook her head and snorted in disbelief at the sight of the elf in front of her. Even  _she_  had managed to get up early for this. Lupa must have been the only one who could sleep through all the commotion happening in the camp right now.

Ariya had a great deal of patience for many things, but waiting on someone else to be ready to party wasn’t one of them.

She grabbed Lupa’s foot and shook it - the little pre-teen elf snorted in her sleep, and fell very still. She was a twitchy sleeper, but Ariya had come to learn that the stillness meant she was waking. She shook Lupa’s foot again, and Lupa groaned, slowly rolling over and throwing an arm over her eyes.

“Give me another half a sun’s mark.”

“Lupa!” Ariya pleaded. “It’s the first day of  _Haurasha'man_! You’re not going to leave me to decorate the halla all by myself, are you?”

Lupa groaned again. “You’ll have the entire Clan helping, why do you need me? You  _know_  they don’t like me.”

“According to who?” Ariya challenged.

“According to the  _halla_ \- they’ve told me so,” Lupa argued, but she sat up and reached for a clean shirt anyway, pulling her worn sleeping shirt off and flinging it aside once the clean one was in her lap.  "Ever since that misunderstanding where I almost got my head kicked in, _none_  of them have trusted me.“

"You can’t be  _serious_.”

Lupa flung her sleeping pants aside, too, and started to wiggle into her clean pair. “I’m  _very_ serious. Why don’t you get Gaelin to help you, and I can help my  _papae_ set up his stall for the market this afternoon?”

“I bet  _Owain_  would be happy to see you,” Ariya said casually.

Lupa glared toothlessly at her for a few moments in silence. “ _Fine_. I’ll come with you. But if I end up with a broken arm or a bashed-in skull, I reserve the right to say  _‘I told you so.’_ ”

Ariya laughed, and Lupa joined her after a few seconds, her face reddening in embarrassment. The looped their arms together amiably, Ariya half-dragging Lupa along in her excitement to get to the festivities.

* * *

Lupa grabbed Ariya’s arm hard and yanked her back behind the treeline. “Wait.” She had seen Owain’s blue-black hair down in the valley where the halla were being kept, with brown-haired Gaelin at his side. They’d had their backs turned, and hadn’t noticed them.

“What?” Ariya hissed at her, clearly annoyed for being kept from going to see her crush.

“They didn’t notice us. I think they’re in the middle of an _interesting_  talk,” Lupa suggested.

“So? We need to get closer to hear what they’re saying.”

“ _You_  do. I absolutely do  _not._ ”

Ariya’s eyes brightened, and she smiled widely and dangerously. “Tell me what they say.”

Lupa nodded and closed her eyes, reaching for one of the halla that was near where they boys were standing. The beast’s thoughts were sluggish, but she was able to filter through to focus on the vision and hearing.

_“- can feel her magic on my skin,” Owain was saying as he looked around, no doubt searching for her._

_Lupa wondered, not for the first time, how they had both grown so differently. Owain had always been very even, his shoulders proportionately wide and hips slim, his limbs just long enough. Gaelin was taller, but he was built like a sylvan, all long, flimsy limbs and narrow trunk._

_“They’ll be down soon enough, I’m sure,” Gaelin answered as he, too, took a peek around behind Owain. “Ariya would have used you as bait to get her to come along, I bet.”_

_“Wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to.”_

_“Really, though, how do the halla still hate her that much? It was an accident,” Gaelin said, though it came out more like another question._

_“I guess Ghilan’nain liked to hold grudges,” Owain observed with a one-sided shrug. He looked at the halla Lupa was looking through, his stormy grey eyes boring into her. She wondered if he had figured out that she was eavesdropping._

_If he did, he didn’t bring it up, instead opting to turn back to Gaelin. “They’ll be here soon enough, Gaelin,” Owain chuckled. “I doubt you’ll see one without the other.”_

_Gaelin sighed. “How do you do it?”_

_“Do what?”_

_Well, it’s like… It’s like you and Lupa have always just_ known,” _Gaelin huffed, his narrow shoulders slumping. “Like, we all see the two of you and you’re already like two arms on the same body, two halves of the same heart. How are you so_ sure? _”_

_“What are you trying to say, Gae?” Owain asked softly._

_Gaelin sighed deeply. “I just… I mean, I_ think _Ariya feels the same way, but she’s so hard to read.”_

_Owain laughed again. “It’s funny, isn’t it? How blind we are when we’re in the centre of it.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Gae, she’s definitely got it just as bad as you do,” Owain told him as he shook his head._

_“You seem so sure.”_

_“I_ am _sure, because_ I’m _not the one she’s giving the doe eyes to.”_

_They fell silent for a moment. Owain went back to watching the halla Lupa was looking through._

_“How are you so sure of each other?” Gaelin asked. Owain looked at him again._

_“I’m not,” Owain answered very seriously. “I won’t be until I slide the ring on her finger, until the first little mageling takes its first gulp of real air and breaks the night with their cry.”_

_“She’s so much younger than us, though. You really want to wait that long?”_

_“Are you saying you wouldn’t if Ariya was the same age as her?”_

_Gaelin simply frowned. His expression was answer enough._

_“I don’t think either of us truly enjoys the waiting, Gae, but we know we’ll be rewarded in the end.”_

_“I don’t know what to do, Owain. I was so sure I was going to tell her, but now I’m so scared she’ll reject me-”_

_“You won’t know until you say it,” Owain told him, grabbing around Gaelin’s lean forearms and squeezing, forcing him to look at him. “Take a deep breath, and find your steel again.”_

_Gaelin nodded, and Owain let go with a nod. “Lupa hasn’t moved… I wonder if her and Ariya are up the hill.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“I know how to read her now,” Owain assured him._

_Gaelin frowned again, a knot forming between his brows. “Why would they be waiting? Do you think Ariya’s trying to convince her to come down into the valley?”_

_“No, Lupa’s probably been eavesdropping on the whole conversation,” Owain admitted, unaffected, his brows raised a little as he side eyed Gaelin._

_“_ What _? How? I thought you said they were up at the top of the path, they couldn’t hear that – oh.” Gaelin looked at the halla Lupa was watching through, and so did Owain; he winked at her, and Gaelin let out another huff. “The halla?”_

_“Most likely,” Owain chuckled. “Come, if they’re so keen on staying up at the top of the path, we’ll have to go to them.”_

Lupa opened her eyes just as Ariya was ducking her head back behind the tree.

“They’re on their way up.”

“Come on, into the forest,” Lupa suggested with a nod. “I’ll tell you what they were talking about, but let’s give them a bit of a run-around.”

Ariya rolled her eyes, but she smirked, and followed Lupa into the trees.

* * *

“Come  _on,_ Gaelin!” Ariya laughed out as she reached for the other boys hand and dragged him into the herd.

Owain chuckled when Gaelin looked over his shoulder at him, flashing a look that spelled both optimism and terror at the prospect of having to hold Ariya’s hand.

Lupa sighed next to him, and he tore his eyes away from his two friends to look at her. He could only see the top of her head at this angle, so he put on arm around her shoulders and reached across with his free hand to gently hook two fingers under her chin so she would look at him.

Their eyes locked for a few seconds, but then Lupa’s cheeks flushed and she smiled brightly, and he couldn’t help but watch the way her lips stretched when she did. They were a beautiful, rich, inviting shade of pink, deeper than the colour in her cheeks that was making her splattering of freckles stand out.

She pulled away and stared at her feet for a few seconds, taking a deep breath. When she didn’t say anything again, Owain looked back to Ariya and Gaelin: they were busy picking out wreaths and garlands of flowers and berries to adorn their halla with, Ariya enthusiastically pulling the most extravagant pieces she could find out of the piles with one hand, since her other was busy still clasped tightly to Gaelin’s.

Lupa shifted under his arm. “You could have gone with them,” she told him, looking up at him again with guilt in her eyes this time. “I can go help my  _papae_  with his stall while you help them decorate a halla.”

“I’m not going to just let you be unincluded, Lupa,” Owain told her, tucking a strand of hair behind one of her ears. “I’m more than happy to stand back and watch with you.”

Lupa sighed again and rested the side of her head against his bicep. They were silent for another few minutes, Lupa’s eyes on their friends and their halla.

Ariya and Gaelin were on their way back when she finally broke their silence.

“I hate the waiting, too,” she murmured. “But I wouldn’t change it for the whole of Thedas.”

Owain squeezed her shoulders tighter, and resisted the urge to plant a kiss on the top of her head.

* * *

Gaelin shook the hair out of his eyes as Ariya led him to Lupa’s father’s stall.

“Ah, there you are!” Mahanon called to them warmly. “Where are my baby and her boy?”

“They fell behind,” Ariya answered with a smile. “I think Lupa saw the fruit stand, they’re probably clear out of peaches.”

Gaelin didn’t hear her, enraptured as he was by the way Ariya’s smile brightened her whole face. He continued to watch as she  _oohed_  and _ahhed_  over Mahanon’s trinkets, until she turned to show him one.

It was a simple pendant made of ironbark and expertly detailed into a raven, painted black with little sapphires for its eyes.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked him breathlessly.

Gaelin swallowed thickly, but he smiled and nodded. “Perhaps one day I’ll be able to produce something of such skill,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“Come on, Gaelin, you’re still learning!” Ariya assured him with a soft hand on his forearm. The touch jolted through him, but he was brought back to reality again by the sound of Mahanon’s voice.

“Here, I didn’t put it out, because Gaelin didn’t tell me I could, but I think you’ll like this one, Ariya.”

Gaelin held his breath, terrified and a little wide-eyed as Mahanon pulled out a polished wood ring he had carved just last week. It was a simple braid pattern, nothing spectacular, but Ariya’s eyes brightened and she gasped.

“It’s  _beautiful,_  Gaelin!”

He could feel his face flushing under her praise, but he soared at her compliment. “It’s nothing compared to that raven.”

“Absolutely it is!  _You_ made it,” she murmured as she turned to him, scandalized that he seemed to think it lesser.

They simply stared at each other for a few seconds, but Ariya turned to replace the things in her hands on the table. “Maybe in a few days, Mah,” she sighed defeatedly. “I haven’t any money today.”

“If they’re still here at the end of the week, you can have them.”

She nodded, looking crestfallen. It broke Gaelin’s heart to see her so upset over them, and he looked at where his ring and the pendant were sitting on the table – would  _he_  have enough for them?

He glanced at Mahanon, his mentor, and saw him nod a few times. “Actually, Gaelin, I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. Is it okay if I steal him for a bit, Ariya?”

“Sure. I’ll just be up the way,” she gestured, and Gaelin promised to catch up shortly.

They waited until she was well out of earshot before Mahanon picked up the ring and the pendant, and shoved them into Gaelin’s hands.

“Listen, kiddo,” Mahanon murmured to him, “I had a hard time telling Lupa’s mother how I felt, too. I made her a ring not unlike this one – not a promise ring, just a small token of affection.”

“How does that help?” Gaelin asked, uncertain.

“Well, you’ll get to gauge her feelings based on her reaction to them,” Mahanon explained. “If she accepts them enthusiastically, you’ll feel more confident in yourself, as well. But if she seems too hesitant, you’ll know you need to back off. Just trust me on this one.” He clapped Gaelin on the back, and Gaelin nodded. A gift.  _Two_  gifts.

Mahanon almost made this plan sound sensible.

“Alright, kiddo, now go get ‘er! She isn’t going to wait around forever, you know. The only two who are stupid enough to do that are my little girl and that far-too-patient boy of hers.”

Gaelin couldn’t help but laugh at that. He turned and looked over the crowd as he placed the tokens safely in his pocket and scanned for Ariya. He found her a few stalls up, browsing slowly. “Thank you,” he offered to Mahanon before he left.

“Get going!” Mahanon laughed.

Gaelin took a deep breath, and made a direct line for Ariya. When he reached her side, he placed a hand on the small of her back gently.

“Oh!” she turned around a little started, but beamed at him when she realized it was him. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just talking shop,” Gaelin assured her. He would wait to give her his tokens – perhaps tonight, maybe in a few days, but Mahanon was right. He already felt more confident.

Ariya pointed out a painting someone had made of Dirthamen’s ravens, and he watched her face light up with joy for the hundredth time that day. He would never tire of the sight.

* * *

Ariya watched Owain offer Lupa a small helping of charoset, and smiled wistfully. A beautiful new hair comb was stuck in her flaming hair, covered in bright emeralds, while Owain wore his new tunic proudly. They had exchanged their gifts with red faces in front of the others around the fire a few hours ago.

Ariya had a set of carving tools for Gaelin, but she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to give them to him, yet – she couldn’t say  _why_ , just that she shouldn’t.

Haurasha’man was almost over. She loved Haurasha’man; it wasn’t her  _favourite_  holiday, but a week of carefree celebration and fun was something everyone in the Clan looked forward to. She wondered if Gaelin had got her anything, and sighed with the realization that no, he probably hadn’t. Of course his ring and the raven pendant had gone, too, and she didn’t believe that he would have got them for her.

She stared into the flames of their fire, lost in them as she slowly picked at her own helping of charoset. She started when a hand found her knee.

Gaelin’s soft brown eyes were boring into hers. He squeezed the top of her knee gently as he nodded toward the clearing’s edge. “Want to come for a bit of a breather with me?”

She smiled. “Sure,” she agreed, and he stood, offering her a hand.

She took it, and followed him under the leafy canopy, away from the sight of the others but still close enough that some of the firelight could filter through the trees to them.

They faced each other, closer than they usually would with the others around, and Gaelin cleared his throat after a few seconds of awkward silence. “I got you something,” he murmured, voice low.

Ariya felt a jolt go through her, but she reached out to stop him when he reached for a pocket. “Me first,” she told him, and he nodded at her.

Her stomach was knotting in fear, and her hand was shaking a little when she pulled out the simple wood box that held her gift. “Here,” she said as she handed it to, and brought both hands together in front of her nervously before reaching up to play with her hair.

Gaelin unclasped the box, gasping as he lifted the lid and saw the contents inside. “Ariya –  _thank you_. I needed a new set so  _badly._ I’ll make you something with them, first thing.”

Ariya giggled, her stomach loosening with the knowledge that he liked her gift. He closed the lid and put it in a pocket more quickly than she would have liked, but he reached again for his gift for her.

“I, um… I actually have two for you.”

_Two? He didn’t_ actually-

And yet, there they were: the little raven pendant on a shining, delicate silver chain, and the ring he had carved.

“It’s not a promise ring,” he explained quickly. “I know we’re still too young for that. It’s just a… token of affection, if you will. And I couldn’t just leave the raven there, after you-”

Ariya closed his hand with one of her own, and when she was sure his tokens wouldn’t fall out onto the leafy forest floor, she pushed the front of his shoulder until his back was flat against the trunk of the nearest tree, stretching up on her toes to press her lips to his.

He let out an inarticulate sound of shock, which quickly turned into a groan of pleasure as he looped his free hand around her back and pressed a flat palm there to hold her closer. Ariya had never kissed anyone before, and neither had Gaelin as far as she knew, but the experience was not quite as romantic as she had believed it would be. She let instinct guide her, her mouth opening against his, her tongue darting forward to meet his, and he followed her lead in a fraction of a second. She tilted her head, their kiss deepening and teeth clashing a few times before she backed up, gasping for air.

“Well,” Gaelin croaked out after a few stunned seconds of silence. “I was kind of hoping we’d get to that, but I wasn’t quite expecting to get there tonight.”

“At your rate, we never would have,” Ariya teased, and she smiled while Gaelin flushed. Her uncomfortable knot of worry had broken open into a swarm of giddy butterflies, and they soared as he took a moment to slide the ring on her thumb and to hook the necklace around her neck.

“Good thing you’re so assertive, then,” he muttered at her.

Ariya heaved another deep sigh, and this time she let Gaelin take the lead, tipping her head back to kiss him a little more softly than before, the world around them forgotten.


End file.
